How does this situation arise? How do we become victims of this sad social fact? And what can we do about it?
As a quick mental exercise, give yourself this test. Please read through the following five life goals and decide which one is the single most important goal to you. It is quite natural to want something of all the things on the list, but the exercise is to select the one that is most important to you. If necessary, if you are having trouble deciding which is most important, work towards the goal by deleting the least important first. Then work with the items that are left and delete the one that is now the least important. Repeat the process until there is only one left.
A wealthy life. Having an abundance of money and assets to enjoy the good life.
A family life. Gaining most pleasure from close interaction with your family.
A life of achievement. Gaining respect and recognition through your achievements.
A stable life. A life of stable expectations, knowing you have a secure source of all the basic needs of life.
A stimulating life. An active life full of exciting and challenging situations.
Important consequences can follow from the goals in life you have chosen. The fact is that you may not have spent a lot of time consciously thinking about which goal in life you are pursuing. But, though you may not have been thinking about it consciously, your subconscious mind has always been yearning and working towards the main goal.
Once you have looked thoughtfully at the above matrix and decided which goal captures your imagination, think about your actions in the past. Have they been directed towards the main goal? Maybe the source of some of your past frustrations is the fact that you have been directing your conscious effort towards a goal which is not truly your subconscious goal. This type of situation has to result in tension, frustration and unhappiness as your conscious mind and your subconscious mind work against each other.
Thinking about this matrix might also explain quirky things that you have done in the past. It might help to explain actions which people thought were out of character. It might help to explain the behaviour of your friends or relatives who started acting in unaccustomed ways. We all know of people who, mid-career, have ditched a secure job with a guaranteed income to pursue something where there was a high risk of failure and no certainty of success. It is a common reaction to think these people are crazy, but if you look more closely you might see that they are actually making an important lifestyle choice. They may have pursued the goal of a stable life for many years because that is what society expects. They went about getting qualified at something, working their way into a career, gaining promotions and accumulating the physical assets that go along with security and stability. But what they had wanted all the time was really a stimulating life or a life of achievement. If you look behind their actions you might see that, while they have incurred the risk of failure, they have also increased the chances of success. They may have also increased the chances of meeting interesting and exciting people who are ‘doing things’. The idiosyncratic thing they did, the thing that everyone else all thought was crazy, the thing that was out of character, was really the thing that they had wanted all the time. The struggle between their subconscious mind and their conscious mind had been won by the subconscious.
The use of this matrix can also be helpful when you are trying to resolve conflicts in relationships. Take the case of a marriage. At the start of the marriage the two partners were caught up in the wild excitement of their love for each other and the force of this emotion carried all before it. As the years go by the binding force of the love can come under pressure where, deep down, each partner is actually motivated towards a different goal in life. One may want security and the other may want excitement. Neither of them may have ever really recognised this aspect of their own personality. It is a subconscious thing and their mind is subtly directing their actions towards their dominant goal. As it seems common to believe that “everyone else thinks the way I do”, each partner in the marriage assumes that what they want is automatically what the other wants also. What havoc this can produce where the goals are different! Taking time to identify differing goals in life can be important. The partners in this fictional marriage need not simply shrug their shoulders and dissolve the relationship because their goals are different. Rather, they can use the information to help resolve their conflict. Neither has to change, but the motivation of each person needs to be taken into account. The challenge for so many people in life is that they need to carry out this evaluation process consciously.
The last thing I want to say about this matrix is the fact that your goals in life can change over time. Even if you are aware in one stage of your life, that you are motivated towards one thing, you should also be aware that as the years go by your motivation may change. Your priorities can alter. I’ll give you an example from my life.
When I was just a young boy, probably 14 or 15, my parents went to the Tax Office to clear up some sort of a problem and to hand in their tax returns. On this particular day I happened to be with them. We took the lift in the city building to the third or fourth floor and, when the door opened, it opened directly into the reception area of a vast tax office. There were other people waiting around, sitting listlessly on the seats in the foyer. Across one full length of the foyer was a formidable reception counter with various clerks on one side talking with various tax payers on the other. Spread out on the counter between each couple were the gigantic sheets, almost the size of a tabloid newspaper, on which people filled out their tax details in those days.
It wasn’t long before my parents’ turn came. They stepped up to the counter and started talking. I went with them and looked idly about but I was shocked by what I saw next when I looked over the counter. Before me was a vast open room occupying that entire level of the building. It was filled with row upon row of desks. And at the desks sat row upon row of government employees all working on these large taxation spreadsheets. Remember, this was in the days before computers. I knew it was secure to have a government job … but at what price did this security have to be bought? I couldn’t believe the mind numbing, boring and repetitive work experience I was watching. I was horrified.
This experience was one of the things propelling me, at that stage in my life, to apply for entry to Duntroon, the Royal Military College. My main goal in my life then, was excitement. I imagined the glamour and excitement of being a student at Duntroon and how exciting life would be in the army as an officer, after that. When I entered Duntroon all I wanted was the exciting things, to throw grenades at the range, to fire rifles and machine guns, to ride in tanks and trucks, to repel from helicopters and do all the other things associated with army life.
I achieved all those things and also experienced it all for real in the Vietnam War. Some years later, however, I found that the excitement and glamour that had motivated me so much as a young man were now further down on the list of my priorities. The reasons why a young boy had decided to go to Duntroon were no longer the reasons why a grown man approaching thirty, now holding a much higher rank, should want to stay in the army. Fortunately, at the time, I made the change I needed to make in my life. I transferred to the Army Reserve where I continued to serve my country and to be promoted. However, now the weight of my effort was directed to my civilian career in management. My position on the matrix would have been either to achieve a prosperous life or a secure life.
Still later, another change was forced upon me. This was when my three daughters were murdered savagely and senselessly in Sydney in 1987. On the matrix we have been using this shift has brought me back more towards the things that motivated me when I was younger. Now, I would say that my position in the matrix is to lead an important life. It’s not so much the importance I want in the way of having status or being well known, it’s rather the fact of being able to do something important. To help other people face trauma and help them get through it. To contribute in a meaningful way to the successful lives of others and to see the results of my work in the friendships that I have formed. To mix with people who are also doing things.
Having now opened your mind to these thoughts, this might be a good time to do Mind Exercise No.1 which involves active meditation.